


Bedtime Stories

by Nana_41175



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Adult Fairy Tales, Bedtime Stories, Bond is sick and being a baby, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Romance, roald dahl stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25552357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nana_41175/pseuds/Nana_41175
Summary: Written for 007 Fest 2020, for the collab prompt: Bond comes down with a fierce cold and Q attempts to soothe him to sleep by reading his favorite book aloud to him. (Well, maybe not his favorite book in this case but something else…XD)
Relationships: James Bond/Q
Comments: 14
Kudos: 59
Collections: 007 Fest Fancreations





	Bedtime Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storm_of_sharp_things](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_of_sharp_things/gifts).



**Author’s Notes:** This is written for **007 Fest 2020’s** collab prompt table. [**Storm_of_sharp_things**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_of_sharp_things/pseuds/storm_of_sharp_things) asked for: Bond comes down with a fierce cold and Q attempts to soothe him to sleep by reading his favorite book aloud to him. (Well, maybe not his favorite book in this case…XD)

Many thanks to [**Soufflegirl91**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soufflegirl91/pseuds/soufflegirl91), who suggested Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and BFG; and to my fabulous Beta, [**Christinefromsherwood**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/christinefromsherwood/pseuds/christinefromsherwood), for helping me knock this baby into shape!

Passages were taken from [**Little Red Riding Hood**](https://ace.home.xs4all.nl/Literaria/Txt-Dahl.html) (Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl), and [**The Tiger’s Bride**](https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=Y29tbXVuaXR5c2Nob29sLm9yZ3x1cy1yZXZpc2lvbnMtaW4tbGl0ZXJhdHVyZS1qYWNvYnN8Z3g6MmM2MWNhNTg2ZGMyNzlkMQ) by Angela Carter.

* * *

“Read me a story,” Bond said as soon as Q entered the bedroom.

“Are you serious?” Q stared at him, outraged. “You texted me to come home earlier just for _this?”_

“Well, you told me to sleep and I couldn’t,” complained Bond, his voice heavy and thick with the vicious head cold that had confined him to bed for two whole days. “I haven’t slept the entire afternoon.”

Q dumped his messenger bag onto a nearby chair and ran a hand through his hair. “You’re a menace, you know that?” he said. “You’re lucky we haven’t got anything going on at work. Wait, did you even have lunch?”

He surveyed Bond—a wreck compared to his usual self, propped up on a bunch of pillows, hair wild. The bed was strewn with newspapers, books and magazines, and piles of discarded tissues. Very obviously, the man was bored stiff.

Bond sniffed. ‘Well…”

“You didn’t even have a bit of the soup I made you this morning?” Q said, outrage mounting. “It’s just there on the hob!”

“I wasn’t hungry!” Bond whined as he rubbed a tissue over his red, runny nose. “But I’d very much like it if you read me a bedtime story.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” snapped Q. “Just how much of that cold medicine did you take the whole day?”

“Not enough,” muttered Bond and Q gave up.

“I see arguing with you is quite pointless as you’ve regressed into infancy,” sighed Q, moving away to the kitchen.

 _“Q---!!”_ Bond’s voice immediately floated after him. It was almost a wail.

“Yeah, hold on!” called Q, shaking his head in exasperated amusement as he turned on the hob. “You’ll survive ten minutes without me.”

He returned with a steaming bowl of soup to find one of the cats perched on Bond’s chest, engaged in a staring contest with the invalid.

“Down, Duncan,” said Q gently as he removed the cat from the bed.

Bond sighed dramatically. “At least he was warm.”

“Here.” Q took a pillow and placed the bowl on top of it, almost right under Bond’s nose.

“I’m not—”

“No soup, no bedtime story,” said Q as he climbed into bed himself, his tablet in hand. “And while we’re at it, do you need the pillows fluffed, your Highness?”

“Ha ha,” said Bond, though he did start sipping at the bowl gingerly.

Q sighed as he glanced at the variety of reading materials strewn about. “Seems like you’ve gone through everything,” he said.

“I was getting eye strain from reading,” Bond replied grumpily.

“Oh,” said Q. “Okay. Well, then. What do you want me to read for you?”

“Anything,” said Bond. “Just not another bloody 300 paged novel.”

Q hummed as he scanned his tablet. “Strike out all the bios and whodunits, then. Right. Perhaps something light…you like Roald Dahl, yes?”

“I’ve read him,” grunted Bond as he settled back onto the pillows after finishing the soup.

“Ah, but not the children’s stories, I bet. James and the Giant Peach, perhaps?” inquired Q brightly.

He began to read: “Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house by the sea…”

It did not take him an entire page to realize that Bond was not engaging. He lay there on his pillows, arms crossed over his chest, face set and staring straight ahead as Q narrated how James Henry Trotter lost his parents to a rampaging rhinoceros that had escaped from the London Zoo.

 _Oh._ Q realized it might be too close a thing, narrating to Bond a story about how a boy named James was suddenly orphaned. It was quite unfortunate, really. Maybe he should have just picked The BFG and perhaps he could make James laugh over the whizzpoppers.

“Erm, perhaps it might be easier if you can just tell me what you’d like me to read,” Q said quite gently, as if to mollify a child.

Bond shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe a fairy story.”

Q’s hand was automatically on Bond's forehead. “Hmm,” he said after a moment. “Well, you do have a slight temperature, just not high enough to induce delirium.”

Bond huffed. “Not just any fairy tale, I want something with a twist.”

“Why, Roald Dahl again!” announced Q. “Revolting Rhymes. Let’s try Little Red Riding Hood, shall we?”

Bond smiled through Q’s narration of how Red Riding Hood dealt with the wolf,

_The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers._

_She whips a pistol from her knickers._

_She aims it at the creature's head_

_And_ bang bang bang _, she shoots him dead._

_A few weeks later, in the wood,_

_I came across Miss Riding Hood._

_But what a change! No cloak of red,_

_No silly hood upon her head._

_She said, ``Hello, and do please note_

_My lovely furry wolfskin coat.''_

Bond actually laughed. “That’s my kind of girl,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Q, glancing at Bond affectionately. “Happy now?”

“More,” said Bond. “That was too short.”

“Well, there’s more where that came from,” Q said. “There’s Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk—”

Bond turned to him and fixed him with a melting look. “Something more…mature, please,” he said suggestively.

“Really, Bond?” Q said, his tone flat. “You want adult fairy tales?”

James made a vague gesture, suddenly bashful. “Well, since I can’t, with you, now…”

Q snickered at some of the titles on offer online: _Depravity, Deceit, Devastation_ (making up the Beastly Tales trilogy).

“Okay, but this is more sensual then explicit,” he finally said, “and it’s by one of my favourite authors. Have you ever read Angela Carter?”

James sagged against the pillows. Obviously, he’d heard of her. “Don’t tell me it’s Chick Lit,” he said.

“Well, that only shows you know zilch about her, you heathen,” replied Q, eyebrow raised. “Here. The Tiger’s Bride. It’s a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I _love_ this.”

James settled back, looking resigned. “Is there any full frontal in there, at least?”

“Well, it will please you to know that the lady was stark naked at the end of the story.”

Bond seemed to perk up upon hearing this. “Oh?”

Q began, “My father lost me to The Beast at cards.”

He glanced at Bond and had the huge pleasure of seeing the man go stock-still, his eyes widening.

He paused, then smiled widely when Bond urged him, “Well, go on.”

Bond kept a steady stream of comments all throughout Q’s narration of the Russian girl, given to The Beast— Milord, masked in a handsome man’s face and with a devil’s knack at cards.

“The father’s clearly worthless. I wouldn’t lose to somebody like The Beast,” Bond said.

“Well, think of the plunging sensation you surely must have felt when you lost to Le Chiffre during that initial round at Casino Royale and maybe you’ll better understand the characters’ feelings,” Q replied.

“He cheated,” Bond muttered, but it seemed to shut him up.

Onto The Beast’s palazzo, nestled in Decembral solitude, to the curious valet and the even curiouser Lady’s Maid, made of metal and whirling nuts and bolts. And onto The Beast’s singular request:

_“My master’s sole desire is to see the pretty young lady unclothed nude without her dress…”_

Bond shook his head. “She’s cruel to refuse him such a simple request,” he said, “if it meant she could be released, along with the restoration of her father’s fortune.”

“Ah, but do you not see what they’re doing to each other?” Q pointed out.

The story wound on, along with the change of heart that was at the center of the fairy tale, the rising strength of the woman and The Beast’s vulnerability, culminating in the surprise ending.

She, white, shaking, raw, offering herself to him (now also uncloaked as the tiger that he was), the key to a peaceable kingdom where his appetite did not have to mean her destruction. And,

 _“He will lick the skin off me!”_ Q read. “Each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, leaving behind a nascent patina of shining hairs…I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur. The end.”

He turned to catch Bond smiling at him.

“So they were the same creatures, after all, beneath their skins,” said Bond. “Bravo.”

Q smiled. “I hope you liked it,” he said. “As I said, I love it.”

“Understandable,” said Bond, “as you’re so very like her.”

“Oh? How so?”

“You know a thing or two about taming real-life tiger men,” Bond said.

“By that you mean, you.”

“Not just me,” Bond said. “Although I’m very flattered you chose me to be with you. Thank you, Q.”

“Hmm, you’re not being a very convincing tiger at the moment,” Q pointed out as he put his tablet away. “More like a big, grouchy baby, but I do love you, James.”

He kissed Bond’s forehead. “Do you think you can sleep now, love?”

Bond gave a drowsy grunt. Already, his eyes were flickering closed. “I’ll try, darling,” he said. “For you.”

“Good,” said Q, smiling softly. “Good night, James.”


End file.
